


Shoot The Lights Out

by dance_tilyouredead



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Anya mother hen, Canon Divergent, Clarke won't let her die, F/F, Lexa can regenerate, Lexa's a melodramatic little shit, Post 3x07, Slow Burn, candles probably, fixing it, following canon, zombie vacation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:24:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_tilyouredead/pseuds/dance_tilyouredead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lexa studied her for a long moment. “Sometimes the dead are hungry."</p><p>Ghosts, Clarke had thought. She had believed that mysticism was filling in where science and technology failed to light the dark places. She was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I shoot the lights out  
> Hide 'til it's bright out  
> Whoa, just another lonely night  
> Are you willing to sacrifice your life?

_In peace, may you leave the shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again._

 Clarke has nowhere to go. And still, they locked her in. Octavia will have left hours ago. She spent too long in Lexa’s bed. Too long. She holds back her tears with another shuddering breath, sitting on the floor next to a bed covered in black blood. Murphy doesn’t say anything. No jeering comments, no harsh words against Lexa or Clarke herself. He looks sad, mournful even, his eyes softened in sympathy.

“You know?” she asks him.

“Hmm?” His voice is quiet. Soft .

“You know what she means to me?”

“Yeah. That Titus fucker made it pretty clear how important you are to her – were to her.” He corrects, watching Clarke for the moment she might break. “I didn’t know until… just now that you felt the same.” He looks down at his hands to give Clarke a chance to pull back her tears.

She appreciates his discretion, she does, but then his quiet calm just reminds her of Lexa. Of how ready Lexa was to die, how often she spoke of her own death with just as much calm and it’s too much. Clarke tears up. Just one tear and then two. Murphy looks up, he sees her tears and it’s all too much. It’s too much and she breaks. With a great heaving sob she lets go her control and she drowns in her tears. 

“Hey, don’t be weak now.” Murphy is next to he, voice soft. 

Ready to push him away, to hate him for intruding, for demanding more than she can give – just like everyone else – she’s surprised when she looks up. Murphy isn’t demanding. He’s worried for her.

“She doesn’t want your tears, Clarke.”

He calls her Clarke. Not princess, not Griffin, just her name. Murphy sits down beside her and lifts an arm in offering. No jokes, no demands just an offer, and one she accepts. Absurdly, Clarke is still wet and hot, her clothes not comfortable after the sweat and slick she shared with Lexa. Just an hour ago Lexa was between her thighs, Clarke between hers. Lexa was smiling and loving… God, she was _loving_ Clarke with every touch. Lexa _loved_ Clarke and Clarke… she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t even allow herself to feel it.

Clarke leans into Murphy and she feels her grief as she burys her face into his shirt, and he pats her hair down and she just feels. She feels the way her body aches, she feels the rough of Murphy’s shirt, she feels this hard awful boy pressed up against her side, and she misses Lexa. She’d been prepared to miss her, to not see Lexa for months after she went back to Arcadia. She’d expected it to be difficult, painful. But there was hope, hope that someday…

And now their someday is stolen. By a fucking stray bullet.

 Eventually, Clarke’s tears subside and Murphy somehow finds a fucking handkerchief.

 “You’re a snotty mess,” he says.

 She accepts the rag and blows her nose, wipes her tears with the back of her hand.

 "Now, how are we getting out of here and how dead is that Titus fucker gonna be?”

 Clarke almost smiles. “Not yet,” she says and pushes back against the rush of memories those simple words provoke.

 “And why the fuck not?”

 “That chip, the commander spirit—”

 “The AI.”

 Clarke looks at him, confused.

 Murphy shrugs. “It’s a whole deal. The AI that destroyed the world? There’s another one, and I think it’s inside your precious commander. Was inside.” He looks away, awkwardly. He still spits hurtful words, but now he has the decency to regret them.  
  
Clarke can’t even start to process what he could mean about the AI, what that could mean for Lexa, for the commander spirit.  She doesn’t really care. She just knows what Lexa wanted.

“The spirit needs to move on. If it’s spiritual or science, Lexa’s consciousness needs to be passed to him. Lexa thinks Aden will win. I trust her judgement. Titus carries the knowledge, the chip and how to get that into a new host. We can’t get in the way of that.”

Murphy wants to argue, but he doesn’t. “So after the big ceremony is done?”

 Clarke looks at him. With the tears gone and the full intensity of grief passed with her tears(she’s learned to grieve quickly on the ground), she sees his face, his wounds and the awkward way he stands. “He tortured you.”

 “Yeah.” He’s standing away from her now, his hands in his pockets. He smells bad. Maybe like he soiled himself at some point. He’s thin too. Who knows how long he was kept prisoner.

“But you only want to kill him? Just Titus? What about the other grounders?” She’s thinking of Bellamy, of Pike, of all the other Skai Kru who want revenge against all people for the hurt they’ve suffered at the hands of a few. Murphy has been tortured by Trikru, and now by a high ranking member of the Polis elite. And yet he’s not full of rancour and bloodlust.

“The other grounders didn’t do this.” He looks genuinely confused. “Titus locked me up in secret. It doesn’t take a genius to know he was doing that shit to me unauthorised.”

Clarke does smile then. “Can you wait until after the ceremonies?”

He looks at the doors, still obviously locked. “Doesn’t look like I have much of a choice.”

“Murphy.”

“Alright, alright I can wait.”

**

 

Hours later, it’s nearly dawn again, and Clarke has curled up on the couch. She watches the sunrise wishing it were any other, wishing she’d seen more with Lexa. The pillow still smells like her, from the times she spent in Clarke’s room. Clarke holds it close to her face knowing the scent won’t last long; she’s had enough loved ones die around her to know that. Murphy is curled up like a puppy at the end of her bed, below the bloodied furs. It can’t be comfortable but he’d insisted Clarke take the couch.

Without any warning the door opens, cracking against the wall and causing a shard of glass to shake loose. Titus storms in, cloak billowing around his feet. Murphy leaps up and presses himself against the wall. He looks at Clarke with apology mixed in with the fear in his eyes. He can’t do anything for her. Not against the man who tortured him.

Clarkr rises more calmly, taking her time to find her feet, straighten her clothes and lazily meet Titus’ gaze. She owes him nothing. He will probably have her killed regardless of the promises he made to his precious dying Heda. 

“You!” He growls and points at Clarke, full of accusation. “What have you done?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” She’s done with politeness.

“Where have you taken her?”

Clarke feels something flip in her stomach, heat burn through her. “She’s dead,” Clarke spits. I can’t take her anywhere. You made sure of that.” 

Titus is furious. Rage writ large across his features. “As if you did not do enough damage while her heart was still beating.”

 Murphy finds his voice, though he stays by the wall as he says, “You might not have noticed, but we’ve been locked in here for hours. What could we have done?” 

Titus visibly collects himself, “Then one of your people.”

“One of my people, what, Titus? What are you trying to acuse me of? You killed her.” Clarke feels a tremble in her voice, but holds strong.

Titus begins to pace, feeling agitated. “Lexa’s body.” He doesn’t say any more and Clarke loses her patience. 

“Lexa’s body? Is what?” she asks. “Covered in blood? Dead? Used to be damn fine until you you fucking shot her? What?” Murphy winces, but Clarke ignores him. “Lexa’s body is what?” then it hits her. “It’s gone,” she says. “The body is gone.” She almost laughs. “You careless fuck.” 

At Titus’ downcast expression Murphy steps forward. “What? Her enemies got a hold of her?” 

“Maybe.” Clarke frowns, feeling suddenly sure that can’t be true.

“And?” Murphy gestures at Titus, the terrified look in his eyes, the way he wrings his hands and paces the floor. “Why does he look like the bitch in the red dress has a knife to his dick

Everything falls in to place and she walks closer to Titus. “It’s not just a superstition is it?”

Murphy looks annoyed as well as confused. “What is?” he asks again.

Clarke doesnt know how to explain, she doesn’t know if she’s starting to believe their superstitions or if it’s just grief and hope clouding her judgement. Titus is wringing his hands, glancing toward the window as if his every nightmare could come crawling through. 

“The grounders.” She turns to Murphy. “They don’t always stay dead.”

 

**

 

It was only a few days ago, Clarke had found Lexa in her room. She’d had no agenda, was just there because she wanted to be. She knew then why she spent so much time with Lexa, she just didn’t want to admit it. 

Lexa was distracted, pacing back and forth.

 “What’s wrong?”

 “We cremate our dead.” It was a half formed thought spewing out past Lexa’s anger.

 Clarke took a seat in one of the softer armchairs with her sketchbook across her knees. “And this makes you pace a hole in your floor?”  
  
Lexa glared at her, though her gaze softened a little when she saw the sketchbook in Clarke’s hands. “Some families are foolish,” she explained, still walking in circles. “Burying their people. They put everyone in danger with their selfishness.”  
  
Clarke had wondered how there could be any grounder superstitions she'd not already heard. “If they wish to bury their loved ones instead of burning them, how does that affect anyone else’s safety?”  
  
Lexa stopped pacing to look at her. “You burned your dead in the sky as well. You told me. They burned in the atomspear.”  
  
“Atmosphere,” Clarke corrected absently. “Yes but that was need more than want. We buried everyone since the fall.”  
  
Lexa was in front of her in one swift move. She grabed Clarke's shoulders, cold fingers digging into her arms. “Tell me how they died,” she demanded.  
  
Clarke pushed the hands away. Lexa's presence was hurtful enough without the insistent pressure. “Lots of ways. Blood poisoning, head trauma, hypovolemia from the acid fog, exsanguination.” Lexa demanded she explain the last. “Complete blood loss through a major artery.”  
  
Lexa nodded at the time, satisfied with the explanation. “Any other?”  
  
Clarke hesitates. Of course there were others. “Why is it so important?”  
  
“Are. There. Any more?” Lexa didn’t touch Clarke again, but the dark growl of her voice, the flash of her eyes was clear. Lexa would never hurt her, but she needed desperately to know.  
  
Clarke frowned, taking a deep breath to push back the resentment that flooded her in those few moments when Lexa’s ire was turned on her. “And Charlotte,” Clarke said finally. She remembered the girl as sweet if homicidal, and a loss which cost her so much in those early days. “She fell from a cliff.”  
  
“The body?” Lexa had looked thoughtful then, calculating.  
  
“It was a high cliff.” Clarke finished.  
  
Lexa nodded, anxiety sliding from her. “And that is all? There are no others that you buried?”  
  
Lexa looked so relieved at her nod that Clarke's anger faded. “Why is it so important?”  
  
Lexa studied her for a long moment. “Sometimes the dead are hungry too.”  
  
Ghosts, Clarke had thought. She had believed that mysticism was filling in where science and technology failed to light the dark places.

 

She was wrong.

 

//

 

Clarke and Murphy aren’t allowed to leave and it’s morning before she figures out a plan to get them out. They both bathe, because if Anya taught Clarke anything, it’s that having stinking bodies is just as likely to get them caught as making a whole lot of noise.

Murphy isn’t exactly full of helpful suggestions, but he does as he’s told and doesn’t get in the way. He even knocks out the guard at their door and doesn’t cause any fuss when they get to the elevator shaft and find it unguarded.

“This doesn’t feel right,” he says.

Clarke can’t disagree. She looks up and down the hallway and listens for any sign they might be discovered. Nothing.

“The fuck are we going to do when we get out of the building Clarke?”

“You want to stay here and get tortured longer?”

Murphy takes a deep breath, his cheek twitching at the word torture. “After you." 

Clarke pulls the rope by the open shaft as she’d seen the different guards do before. “How did anyone get Lexa down here?” She questions alloud. She can’t figure it out. How ayone could sneak into the building let alone get out with an unconcsious body. She tries to think the word corpse but can’t.

The elvator box arrives with open doors. Again no guard. 

“You honestly telling me this doesn’t have trap written all over it in big neon letters?” Murpy is hissing his words as a whisper.

 “You think I can’t see that?” Clarke can’t help the way she whispers right back at him. She grips the sword in her hand tighter. Lexa has been teaching her, but she’s hardly expert, and there’s a difference between fighting a wild animal and a trained warrior. 

She lifts Murphy’s hand, the one that’s holding her old gun. It only has one bullet left. The one she’d kept for Emmerson. She presses his hand against his chest, pushing harder than necessary to try and clear his head. “Just keep your head and aim properly, okay. I know how to get out of here quietly, so long as we can get passed the elevator guards.”

Murphy looks as much resigned as anything else, although if he’s resigned to killing more people or to dying himself she can’t be sure.

They step into the lift and Clarke pulls the string that signals the men so many stories down. Lexa had told her these men are warriors who commited an unforgivable crime, now they are prisoners, spared from execution to work unitl they die. 

Once inside, and travelling downward, all they can do is wait.

Murphy is side eyeing her. Maybe waiting for a signal that she’ll kill him, maybe waiting for her to start crying again. Finally she has enough.

“What are you looking at?”

Murphy shrugs. “I was just thinking about how fucked up it is.”

“What is?”

“That we came all this way. To get tortured, beaten, shot at and blown up. And still the worst pain is loving someone. Coming all this way to find someone who understands us. And then losing them.” 

Of all the things that he could have said, this is the worst. She feels emotion burn her throat again, but they don’t have time for her tears. She needs to focus. “If we survive this bullshit we can talk about it, okay?” 

“This bullshit?” he laughs. “Fucking zombies.” He shakes his head like there’s nothing more that he can say.

“Whatever you want to call it, I —” she doesn’t get to say anymore as the light of the ground floor shines through the gaps around the doors. “Get ready,” she says and hold up her sword.

“Yeah right.” Murphy holds up the gun still laughing and shaking his head.

Some archaic device is still working well enough that the elevator dings as the elevator hits ground. There’s no announcement but Clarke can almost hear it in her head, “Ground Floor”. 

Widening her stance and lifting the sword pooint first toward the door, she chances a glance at Murphy. “You’re life depends on it John.”

For a moment the light around the doors is interrupted, there’s a scuffle outside and Clarke tries to squint through the gap. There’s nothing but shadows.

“Now what?” Murphy mutters.

The scuffle stops with a sickening crack and Clarke feels her heartrate rise. She thinks she’s going to die. Some part of her welcomes it, ready to let go. Maybe ready to follow Lexa to wherever she may actually be. Ready, she thinks, until the doors open…

The shadows are stark at this level, with torchlight shining behind a shadowy stranger. “Skai girl.” A familiar voice sneers the words. “You do have a habit of making yourself invaluable, don’t you?”

Clarke squints against the light, unable to believe what her other senses are telling her. It can’t be. 

Clarke steps forward, not lowering her sword, getting closer until the shadows melt back and the stranger is lit well enough to see. 

Anya has dark paint around her eyes, and fur accross her shoulders. She’s smirking at Clarke’s shock, eyes filled with playful glee.

Clarke feels a foolish urge to hold out her hand, to see if Anya will shake it in greeting. Anya’s eyebrows go up as if she can see straight into her thoughts.

“Anya?”

 Anya all but rolls her eyes. “And Lexa wants to tell me you’re smart.”

Clarke blinks, too thrown to formulate a retort, she wants to know everything but gets no chance as Anya’s arm comes up, a fist flies at Clarke’s temple, and everything is darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We can get through this together.

Anya remembers Lexa as such a determined little thing. She could only watch as at eleven years old, Lexa got her first scar chasing down a wild boar. With a shallow wound in its side, the boar had charged her and gouged a sharp tusk into her thigh. Lexa clutched at the wound in her leg, unable to follow as it ran away squealing.

When they got back to camp, the healer left Anya with thread and needle to stitch Lexa up. Anya was only sixteen and she tried to be gentle with the little girl she had already spent a year mentoring. Lexa didn’t cry.

Now, laid out on a slab in a bunker deep beneath Polis, Lexa can’t cry. Her body frozen in its final deathly state, just barely ticking on, holding out for something to restart her heart. Anya does what she can to keep her limbs from freezing up. She knows that up at ground level, there will be chaos. Conclave can’t be completed until the old commander, the dead commander is there to be burnt with her failed night-bloods.

When Lexa was still small, her conclave was announced nearly three days after the Commander was killed. That commander’s armies had mourned her though she was only a child and new to their lives – barely seventeen.

The day was sweltering. The young noviates were pink-faced and burning in the sun. Their contest required skill with a weapon, but it also tested their endurance. The scar on Lexa’s thigh was soon joined by a burn to her calf and an electric criss-cross pattern along her hip. There was only one other girl left standing to face her in the water – Costia and Lexa were pushed together for the last trial. No weapons, just bare knuckles, elbows and teeth.

Anya had hoped Lexa would survive. She was not surprised when she had won instead.

The previous commander along with seven noviates that fell during the trials were all laid to rest together. The funeral was elaborate, masses of flowers thrown over their bodies. The funeral pyres burned and three days later, under the full moon, Lexa claimed her throne.

Anya looks down at Lexa, twenty-two summers now and grown so beautiful. Her funeral would have been an incredible affair if Anya had let the proper ceremonies happen. She couldn’t let them though. This brilliant, earnest girl couldn’t just stop living. Not when the twelve clans still need her. Not while Anya is still here, lurking in shadows and helping to guide the clans on their path predetermined for them a hundred years ago.

When a small sound escapes Lexa’s throat, Anya knows time is running out.

//

There’s a burning in her abdomen. Not the same as when the bullet hit, when it ripped into her guts. It’s a different pain. A healing pain.

“Did you really stop a war just because the skai girl asked you to?”

Lexa opens her eyes to find Anya standing over her wearing the smirk she remembers from her childhood. She’s somehow not that surprised to see her mentor.

“Blood must _not_ have blood,” Anya mocks her. “Foolish.”

Lexa wants to sit up, to hug Anya and touch her with her own hands, to confirm what her other senses are telling her. She can’t speak or move, though, and she’s in a lot of pain. There’s more strange sensations, running up her arms and legs as Anya moves around her body.

 _Oh skies_ , she thinks. She wants to say, _This isn’t the city of light,_ but she can’t move her jaw or even feel her tongue to try and speak. _What is happening?_ Anya must see the fear and annoyance in Lexa’s eyes.

“I knew you would be a melodramatic shit about the whole death thing. You know, you wouldn’t have been the first commander to want to come back, to take the chance of living without Becca whispering in your ear.”

 _That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it worth the risk,_ Lexa tries to say.

She feels as if her thoughts are splintered, shattered into twisted glittering shards of glass. She can’t tell memory from distortions and dreams. She’s here, she’s back in Clarke’s room, she feels the pain at the back of her neck, seems to remember the pain of Titus cutting out the commander spirit, of those tendrils pulling from her spinal column.

“You can take some time for yourself, Little Lex. For now, just think about remembering how to breathe before all your brain cells shut down, okay?”

 _Little Lex._ No one has called her that in years. It pulls at something in her chest, something that could be her heart, except that her heart still isn't beating. Not even in the slow deliberate rhythm she'd become familiar with since conclave. Anya is still circling her body and Lexa registers that she must be rubbing at her limbs, at her body to keep the blood from pooling and spoiling too quickly. The black blood can stay alive for longer than red – than human blood – but this is still a tricky time.

Lexa feels thirsty, hungry and she feels fear curl up alongside the pain in her abdomen.

 

//

 

Clarke wakes in the dark, the sounds and smells of subway tunnels around her. There’s a warm soft something next to her which she figures must be Murphy. He groans as she tries to roll over, feeling a horrible ache in her head. Anya was here, she remembers. Anya is alive? It’s hard to realise, harder to consider as the truth. Yet she believes it, had started to consider the possibility that Lexa too – if her body is not be burned soon enough – could be revived.

As Clarke tries to find some equilibrium, the sound of footsteps reached her and she tries to sit up, to open her eyes and regain control of her body. She won’t die in a dark wet tunnel, not when she has fought so hard and killed so many to stay alive.

She remembers another dark tunnel, filled with men pointing guns at her. The mountain men were going to kill her, until Anya appeared like an angel out of the dark to save her. She lead her to the water outlet and pushed her to jump from that cliff into a pool where she would surely have drowned if Anya hadn't once again saved her, pulled her out and onto the shore. How many times has Anya saved her now? How grand a debt does Clarke have to repay now that Anya is still alive, or _whatever_ Anya is now.

Because Clarke can’t pretend that Anya survived her wounds. She can’t think of a scenario where she might have been lied to, that Anya might have been anything except buried in the ground at Arcadia’s borders.

The footsteps are too close and Clarke has managed little more than to open her eyes and lift herself to lean against the wall of the subway. The tiles are cool against her cheek, but not enough to bring her back to full wakefulness. She feels feebly for the sword she had been carrying and kicks out to rouse Murphy to wakefulness.

“Give it up skai girl.” Anya’s voice reaches over the last distance along with a torch that lights up the tunnels around them. Clarke slumps with relief.

“Did you have to hit me so hard?” she grumbles reaching for the bump on her head.

Through bleary eyes, Clarke sees Anya shrug. “I needed you out until night fall.”

“Why?”

“Lexa needed me.” Anya doesn’t elaborate and Clarke can’t begin to articulate her annoyance, let alone formulate a proper question to figure out what the hell is going on.

The best she can do is ask, “You took her body?”

“Just for safe keeping.”

The next question Clarke wants to keep in. “How,” she finally wheezes out.

“Too much to tell you right now, Skai Girl.”

“Skai girl,” Murphy scoffs, finally awake enough to respond.

Anya snaps, “Should I call you Sand Girl’s Bitch, little man?”

Murphy rolls over, maybe in an attempt to stand, maybe to strike out at Anya though all he manages is to splash water around and land himself face first in the tepid pool.

Clarke has had enough. “Get on with it Anya. Whatever you’re going to do to me, do it.”

“I don’t wish to harm you, Clarke.” She says her name just like Lexa would with a click at the end, and Clarke aches for that sound.

“Then, what?” Clarke is so tired and her body is aching.

Anya crouches down, the hand not holding the torch slung casually over her thigh. She’s eye level with Clarke when she says, “Get up. I will show you.”

**

Anya leads them through the tunnels for a long time. She keeps a slow but steady pace for which Clarke is grateful. _Lexa must have told her not to push so hard,_ Clarke thinks.

Anya glances back. “When we get there you’ll understand that Lexa hasn't had a chance to tell me anything, Skai girl.”

Clarke glances at Murphy but he isn't looking at anything but his feet. Clarke must have spoken aloud without realising. She's tired enough, her thoughts addled from being knocked unconscious.

Deliberately, Clarke tries to divert her efforts to putting one foot in front of the other. She can't help but feel anxious. She saw Lexa bloody and dying from a gunshot wound. She’s sure her hands are still stained grey from Lexa’s blood, the ink-dark fluid caught under her nails and deep in the cuticles no matter how hard she’d scrubbed. She had kissed Lexa's lifeless lips and said the traveler’s prayer, knowing Lexa was dying.

She had kissed Lexa's lifeless lips and said the traveler’s prayer, knowing Lexa was dying. She _saw_ Titus cut the commander spirit from Lexa's body.The way the machine had crawled from her neck had made Clarke’s stomach churn, just thinking of it now makes her feel nauseous. 

 _Ai gonplei ste odon._  Last night, Clarke mourned.

Last night. She's lost track of time since being knocked unconscious. Lost track of the time she's spent thinking of all the ways she might have acted faster, better, smarter so that Lexa could be alive right now so that Lexa could hold Clarke one more time. .

Since they met, Lexa has kept Clarke steady, strong. When everyone else she cared for told her she had to do better when everyone else demanded more, Lexa was the only one to look at her with pride and tell her she'd done enough. Clarke could almost smile at the cliche romanticism of it. There’s a small ragged burst of sweetness in her chest, then her smile falters and she finds that she's crying again.

Tears fall and she can't seem to stop them, because yes, maybe she's walking toward a living Lexa now, somehow as alive as Anya is in front of her, or maybe this is nothing but a fever dream. Maybe Clarke is still in that tower dreaming of some fantasy world where Lexa could possibly be anything other than a corpse, anything other than another memory to haunt Clarke's dreams.

Before grief can overwhelm her and make Clarke stumble, she grits her teeth and pinches her bare wrist. The throb that echoes from her jaw to the lump on her head is enough to hold back her grief, the pinch enough to bring her back to the shivering cold in her body, the damp darkness of the tunnels.

“Not much further,” Anya says and starts walking faster. Clarke hurries to follow with Murphy trailing behind.

After a few more minutes Anya stops. They’ve reached a hatch door marked with a toxic hazard sign and peeling yellow paint.

“Of course,” Murphy sighs. “I guess, I’m dying young anyway.”

Anya lifts a brow as she looks at him. “It is safe,” she says though there’s little reassurance in her tone. She glances at Clarke. “There is only one corpse inside.”

Clarke’s next breath comes through a shudder remembering the feel of Lexa’s skin under her fingertips as she closed her eyes for the last time. Somehow, she keeps the tears at bay.

Anya has a hand on the hatch wheel, looking at her as if for a signal that she’s ready to go inside.

Clarke grits her teeth again, balling her fists so her nails dig into her palms. She needs to be here, present. She nods.

“I’m ready.”

Anya laughs without humour. “No, you’re not.”

//

Lexa’s heart still hasn’t started beating. Somehow though, the electrical impulses keeping her brain and body going are still active. She can feel every one zapping under and through her skin. Some are fading. She can sense a... shifting in her consciousness, the distortion like a dense wall of fog between one thought, one impulse and the next.

She finds herself thinking about one thing and then somehow her thoughts will just slide off and into something else. It’s as if her mind is a rugged landscape filled with dead ends and misty fields. Every now and then there's a minor rock-slide, sending her freefalling through memories and thoughts she didn’t even know she had.

Before she can panic about what it could mean, she hears movement outside the door. Curiosity, a need to know replaces her panic. Anya said she would be back soon, but trapped as Lexa is in her own body, she can’t be sure how much time has passed. She doesn’t know what kind of space she’s in but she thinks she’s underground. A bunker of some kind. She can't be sure that this is Anya coming through that door.

There's a long pause and then the squealing sound of metal against metal before the door groans open.

“Do not do anything stupid,” Anya says in English.

Lexa feels the panic she's been holding back overtake her. Clarke. Anya brought Clarke here to her _now?_ If Clarke is still in the city, if the kill order is now in place, she is in danger. If Clarke is here, then everything Lexa remembers is true. What they did – what they had, is true and now she’s here. And Lexa can’t protect her, not from the unknown and potentially dangerous thing she’s becoming every second her heart keeps still. She's felt her mind fragmenting already, and if her heart doesn't restart soon, the damage will only get worse.

Anya reaches her side first, murmuring in trigedasleng. “Shh little one. I won't let anything happen to her.”

Confusion pushes out all of her panic. _Anya will protect Clarke?_

“I promise.”

“Lexa?” Clarke's voice comes from the doorway.

Lexa wishes she could move, to turn and acknowledge her in some way. Frustration floods her now, every incoming emotion seeming to overwhelm her – as if she only has space for one at a time.

“She's..?” Disappointment and grief shine through Clarke's voice. Lexa must look terrible, pale and bloody. Dead.

Anya takes Lexa's hand to give it a squeeze as she offers her a rare smile. “No, Clarke. Come see. She is awake.”

Clarke's breath hitches and Lexa wants desperately to hold her as sweet affection pushes out every other thought or care. Clarke is here and Lexa cares so very deeply for her. She starts falling through memories and moments connected to this feeling, connected to Clarke. She feels again, that moment when Clarke came to say goodbye, when Lexa was ready to let her go and instead Clarke pulled her in. That beautiful, shining memory when Clarke kissed her. _Skies_ , it took far too long for Clarke to kiss her again.

There's a long pause then Clarke is close enough that her shadow crosses Lexa’s peripheral vision. So close Lexa could swear she hears her heart beating. Anya steps back, lets go of her hand.

“Lexa?” Clarke says her name again, voice shaky with fear, with sadness.

Lexa can understand the hesitation, she can remember the pain. When Costia was taken from her in so final a way, she would have given anything to get her back, the only pain she could imagine being worse would be to get Costia back only to lose her again. Surely Clarke would hesitate to believe, will be torn in two with both hoping and not daring to hope. Lexa herself is barely holding onto this reality. Barely holding onto this chance that she could get to see Clarke again. Here now so soon.

Or maybe Clarke hesitates for another reason. Maybe Clarke would have happily left after that afternoon and gone back to Arkadia. Maybe, while Lexa was feeling as happy, as weak and open as she has since last she was with Costia, Clarke was only indulging in a physical release. What if, while Lexa was thanking the stars for the incredible girl in her arms, Clarke was only happy for any warm body beneath hers. Anger pours through Lexa’s veins – anger at herself for hoping for too much, for hoping too soon. Anger pushes through her despite having no heartbeat, no pulse to urge it forward.

“Yu gonplei _nou_ ste odon,” Clarke murmurs, finally coming into sight. Her eyes shine bright with tears – bright with tears and… Lexa can't let herself believe it. Not yet. But, Clarke is there with her she takes her hand, she meets her gaze. Clarke smiles and Lexa feels a flutter in her chest.

“I watched you die.” Clarke is choked by her tears now, her smile twisted with too many emotions to name.

A hand comes up at the edge of Lexa's vision. She longs for Clarke to touch her, to cross the distance left between them. She tries to say Clarke's name, but all that comes out from her throat is a whine.

“Don’t force anything, Lexa.” Clarke’s hand does move then and she is stroking Lexa’s cheek with gentle fingers, pressing calm warmth into her skin. “What’s wrong with her?” She looks up at Anya.

“She died.” Lexa can’t see Clarke’s face but she must be glaring at Anya because her mentor sighs. “Her heart is not yet beating. If it does not start soon, she will have suffered too much damage.”

“So how does it start beating again?” Clarke looks down, trailing down Lexa’s body with a healer’s eye. “Electric charge? CPR?” She looks up again, gaze following Anya around the room. Anya always has been prone to pacing – like a cat caught in a cage. “How did you come back? My people buried you – then what?”

Anya lets out a growl at the reminder. “Your people _killed_ me the night before the full moon.”  
  
“The moon? But, then how…” she trails off and she looks down in fear. “That’s days away. She can’t—” Clarke cuts off without the breath to voice her fears. Lexa will die all over again, this last attempt to revive her pointless. Clarke is crying now, furious tears streaming down her cheeks as she looks between Lexa, Anya and the ceiling as if hoping for some inspiration to strike, some miracle to present itself.

Lexa struggles against the bonds of her body, but it isn’t enough. She doesn’t know how to break free. She truly is weak. Her eyes fall closed.

“Float you!” Clarke’s voice is loud and sharp. Lexa thinks she’s cursing Anya, but when she opens her eyes she see’s sparkling blue eyes glaring down at her. “I can’t lose you again.” She says the last words in Trigeda and it makes Lexa ache with sadness. Clarke takes a hold of Lexa’s face with both hands. “I won’t,” She says and leans down, she closes the last distance between them and presses her lips to Lexa’s.

Their lips touch and Lexa feels light spread out and down her neck to zap out through her fingertips. The feeling of light is a sweet pulse. It flows into her limbs, swells and hits a crescendo to surge back inward. Clarke tilts her chin, pressing their lips together with a demanding touch, a thumb sweeps over her cheek, and as the bright agony becomes too much, Lexa's heart gives a great painful throb.

At Lexa’s first breath, Clarke hesitates, wet tears transfer from her cheeks as she pulls back and trails her free hand between Lexa’s breasts to rest against her chest – over her heart. Lexa feels the distance between their lips keenly, feels it in another hard thump of her heart. Clarke shifts, her nose bumping over Lexa’s and prompting another soft bump in her chest. Another kiss is met by another thump.

  
Clarke’s fingers twitch over yet another bump and then Lexa loses her count as a pounding rhythm takes over her heart, takes over her body and suddenly she can taste the air again. Her lungs are filling, her hands are moving. Now Clarke is kissing her in earnest, and Lexa… Lexa is kissing her back.


End file.
